Your friend Jim George thinks you'd be a great addition to Ricochet, so we'd like to offer you a special deal: You can become a member for no initial charge for one month!
Ricochet is a community of like-minded people who enjoy writing about and discussing politics (usually of the center-right nature), culture, sports, history, and just about every other topic under the sun in a fully moderated environment. We’re so sure you’ll like Ricochet, we’ll let you join and get your first month for free. Kick the tires: read the always eclectic member feed, write some posts, join discussions, participate in a live chat or two, and listen to a few of our over 50 (free) podcasts on every conceivable topic, hosted by some of the biggest names on the right, for 30 days on us. We’re confident you’re gonna love it.
Notice the little loop tab with the red arrow. I think there were six or eight of these, originally. Of course, the main problem is that they were too weak. But the compliance of the console’s upper support was such that it was probably easy, with a little force, to separate the bottom part from the upper part. Once one of these loops lets go (it needn’t be broken, just unsnapped) there’s an asymmetric load on the remaining ones. This is why they break. Morons.
Conclusion: Too many modern industrial designers are morons. Standard plastic is not strong enough to have small parts in designs that seem to be sized for steel or aluminum. If you look at the designs above, there are two issues: 1) pivots and swivels subjected to forces (foreseeable ones, dammit) beyond the yield and ultimate strength of the type of plastics commonly used in commercial products; and 2) the use of plastics as springs or springy elements.
Not true. Some of you (PragueExpat, too) are missing the point of the post. If that was the case then all the plastic parts would have close to the same life. The body and other plastic parts are quite sturdy and will be around for a long time. Moveable parts do have a shorter life expectancy but not this much shorter.
This is a design issue only that I want to highlight. Time, effort and money is expended (even if in very low amounts as PragueExpat says). But, the change in design to make these things sturdier doesn’t cost any extra. That’s my point.
The items in my examples aren’t problems with the strength of the materials primarily but I take your point. De-contenting is a real thing that manufacturers (even Toyota) do but they do it after they have the life cycle data in and try to do it where it won’t have any (large) effect on the quality of the product.
I think the problem is too ubiquitous to be explained in the way you are talking about. I think it is using the wrong people — and maybe this is because of cost but it still blows my mind that it keeps happening years after we should have grown past this.
A big time Ditto from a guy with literally tons of tools (not in the Joe Biden sense of literally, but the real literally) from the mention outlets and from some very obscure Aircraft, Auto, and various Trade Crafts tool suppliers (at least to this audience).
If the tool is a one shot deal Harbor Freight is not a bad bargain, but you will only pry my various DeWatt Power Tools (before the Black & Decker buy out) from my cold dead hands….
I am almost ashamed to admit that for me “The right tool for the Job” is almost a fetish. Almost.
Most recent was changing a headlight bulb (Passenger side) on a 2010 Toyota Rav 4, On that side, the bulb cannot be reached (at least by anyone with normal size hands) without moving the coolant filler pipe. It could be attached at the top with a quick release plastic fastener, but of course, instead they use a plastic rivet. So I broke the rivet, moved the filler pipe, replaced the bulb, moved the filler pipe back, and used a cable tie to hold it in place. Ugly, but it works and is out of sight anyway. Likely is costs 0.5 cents more for a quarter turn plastic fastener, rather than the plastic rivet, and likely would take 5 seconds longer to install, so we get something annoying. LOTS other stuff with cars, but this is sort of related to the subject at hand.
I agree – it is foolish to have certain bits fail long before other ones, especially in a part that is not usually designed to fail before the rest of the machine.
Agreed — this is what I’m talking about. Headlights need to be changed several times in the life of the car.
I only want to point out that it’s always interesting to ask a mechanic who is familiar with this car if there is a clever way to change this headlamp without breaking the rivet? I am often surprised by what is suggested. Probably not the case here but just wanted to mention it as Toyota is one of the best (not perfect just the best, as Hugh Hewitt likes to say).
I work mainly with machines involved with making structural parts these days and so I said what I did about safety. Structural parts can show signs of fatigue and stress cracks are searched for all through the life of airplanes but breakage isn’t allowed for these parts. Instead, they are replaced when it’s allowable life is up or if inspection reveals a problem.
But, it sounds like you know more about what happens in the field after the plane is in service. Am I wrong about these structural parts?
plastic rivet removal tool, I got them too.
iWc is right about the preventive replacement philosophy on aircraft, but only to a certain extent. When something really major shows signs of needed replacement it become an economic trade off. In GA aircraft, with a fleet average age of more than 30 years, when the IA mechanic tells you that your main span has fatigue cracks, then it typical is time to part the bird out. His labor hours @ $80/hr and the daunting task of removing stuff from one spar to the new one quickly gets you to the ~50K average street value of said plane. This also applies to the extensive repairs required after doing a “gear up landing”.
On the other side of this coin less planes are need since the pilot population has been steadily (but the rate has been recently increasing) of the pilot population. (My pilot is now a microchip)
A large chuck of the new fleet are composites, (this is after all a post on plastic!) and we are in a whole new world for evaluating fatigue, vs difficulty of repair. especially since the “plastic planes” has a lot of the same toss away/design life characteristic that were noted earlier.
As for why Jet are so safe, take a look at what the designers go thru to keep even the most catastrophic failure in check, it is about 5 minute long but it give some interesting background inlay terms. (I included this since it is so cool to blow things up and watch in slow motion)
There are different layers of requirements. Very often a lifetime is specified that is practically never actually met. For example, wheels have to be certified – but only need something like 1,400 rolling miles to be certified.
BoeBus require that the wheels be designed to handle 50,000 rolling miles. This is unrealistic, because BoeBus are unaware of the specific operating environment where towbars damage wheels.
In the real world, wheels last 15-25,000 rolling miles. They are inspected every time a tire is changed (every 1-3 months), and replaced whenever the damage exceeds preset limits. If they keep passing inspection, they will stay in service, but the wheels are, absolutely, consumables.
The big structural parts are inspected on a schedule, and replaced. The intervals for inspection are set to occur before anything important can fail – but the reason they are inspected is because they quite reasonably may have sustained damage that requires repair or replacement.
You could make a part so strong that it never even needs inspection. But it becomes a virtuous circle – an airplane built to last will indeed not wear out – because it will be too heavy to fly.
Boeing and Airbus design and build airplanes whose lap joint skins are designed to fail in the 25-30 year timeline.
McDonnel Douglas chose a different skin joint technology. I am not sure if it is heavier or not – but the net result is that the airplane has no inherent life limit.
Which is why 737s and A320s are retired in the US within 25 years, and MD-80s and MD-90s etc. are at 35+ years and going strong. As long as fuel is cheap, those airplanes will still be flying.
Thanks PragueExpat. I was reading through this post and comments planning a rather lengthy post along these lines. I don’t really have time to write it right now, and you captured enough to get the point across.
Sorry to argue with you two. The market isn’t responsible for this as much as the design process itself. It’s probable that so many things are being built today that there are not enough good designers (who could fix the mistakes I am complaining about while riding by on a horse: “Oh, that won’t work — how about we just double the thickness of that element or maybe use this xxx plastic instead of that yyy plastic.”). The weird thing there is that there is evidence of design effort — perhaps too much of the work is placed in the hands of industrial designers who aren’t technical but are hired more for their aesthetic sensibilities.
So, that makes sense for the ExTech Sound Meters but not for products designed by VW or Microsoft. These last should know better AND they should be embarrassed.
New Plastics? Just about every type of plastic (Polymer) was discovered by the end of the 1950’s. Some have never been made commercially due consumption of catalysts such as palladium and rhodium.
What has changed over the years is alloys and methods of alloys. Milk jugs made from polypropylene and talc because it is stronger that way in the stiffened matrix (honeycomb) formed around each particle of talc.
Foam insoles can be made with 80% mineral oil compounded with the polymer concoction.
Recent innovations have been for the oil and gas industry, especially deepwater drilling and production. They were using elastomers compounded with carbon nanotubes before NASA and the military thought of application with these new compounded materials.
Free market makes many more advances in technology than government, even space.
From the IT security standpoint, we call this a solution.
“From the IT security standpoint, we call this a solution.”
Hence the requirement for a 48 character password containing 27 unique alpha characters and 11 unique numerical characters, and at least 10 special characters excluding those on the standard keyboard.
SHIFT+CTRL+ALT+META+BUCKY+5 for the win.
I know, but then I can spend $10.00 or so for the tool, and $5.00 or so for a package of 100 rivets, that I need 1 of, and 45 minutes of my time to run to the store get the tool and the rivets (assuming I don’t have to go to 2 stores, and/or order off the net and wait 3 days) spend roughly another 2.50 for gas. So as usual, my 10 minute self-repair winds up taking half a day, and costing $15-$20, (ignoring the light bulb at $12.00 each I am replacing) instead of $0.00 using the screwdriver I already have. If I am a dealer, or mechanic, then I have this stuff, but even here, it makes the costs of entry prohibitive, so reduces competition, and costs all of us more, than a slightly more customer centric design would. Essentially, when looking at all the stakeholders, and doing the system design, the customer gets too short a shrift.
Nice points.
This is the right approach that would address all your concerns/issues.